Norma Alter

Norma Fisher Alter “1908-2010” Norma Fisher Alter, 101, passed away peacefully on January 11, 2010. She was a leap year baby born February 29, 1908 in Richfield, Utah, the third of six children born to Thomas Lyon and Josephine Ekman Fisher. She enjoyed the “Old West” life in Richfield of dirt streets, horses, buckboards, and Indians. She hoed sugar beets along with the other kids in town and survived the influenza epidemic of 1918. She remembered the arrival of the first automobile and the first airplane to come to Richfield. The family moved to Salt Lake City in 1921 where she graduated from West High School in 1925, among the top six graduates in her class. She then moved to Bountiful to help her father run the Bountiful Lumber and Supply Co. and began attending the University of Utah where she graduated with a degree in Health Education in 1930. She taught elementary school for three years. Norma married E. Irving Alter on April 28, 1934 and moved to Schenectady, New York, where Irv was employed by General Electric Co. Two years later they moved to West Caldwell, New Jersey, where they resided for 11 years. Norma and Irv moved back to Bountiful in 1947 where they lived for the rest of their lives. Norma was very active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She served in a Relief Society Presidency, and as Primary President, and served many years as a Stake and Ward Librarian. She served as a visiting teacher until age 101. She loved to do genealogy research and took many hundreds of names to the temple. Her husband Irv joined the Church in 1969 and the family was sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. Norma spent much of her life as a volunteer. For 24 years she was a docent at the Daughter of the Utah Pioneers Museum, even as she began to lose her eyesight and could no longer see the exhibits. For over 14 years she was a volunteer to the patients at the Care Center in the South Davis Community Hospital. She loved to rock and sing to those precious youngsters although she never knew whether they could hear her or not. She pushed the wheelchairs of elderly patients who were sometimes 15 or 20 years her junior. Norma was active in many organizations. They included Phi Mu Sorority, American Association of University Women, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, the Republican Party Legislative Council, a bridge club and the Bonneville Knife and Fork Club. Irv passed away in 1989, about the time that Norma began to lose her eyesight to macular degeneration. Blindness finally eliminated reading, sewing, family research and most of her favorite activities, but never killed her indomitable spirit. She listened to books and church talks on tape, scrubbed floors, washed walls and painted the garage floor. Even as a centenarian, she persevered. She was preceded in death by husband, Irv, a brother, Allan Fisher, and sisters Phyllis Reese and Ardelle Larsen Backman. She is survived by her brothers Wayne Fisher (Zina) and Don Fisher and her three children: Marilyn Bonham (Ralph), Edward Alter (Pat), Janette Goddard (Scott), ten grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren. The family would like to thank the many relatives and special friends who have sustained and supported Norma in recent years and who enabled her to stay in her home well past her 101st year. Thank you to the staffs at the Inn on Barton Creek and South Davis Hospice who have lovingly cared for her in recent months. Funeral services will be held at 11 am on Monday, January 18, 2010, at the Barton Creek Ward, 650 S. 750 E. Bountiful, Utah, where friends and family may call from 9:30 – 10:30 am prior to the service. Interment will be in the Bountiful City Cemetery. Funeral directors Lindquist’s Bountiful Mortuary. The family suggests donations to the LDS Perpetual Education Fund in lieu of flowers.